I think that was a joke, man! You cannot install Linux on FAT because unix rights are not supported.

By the way, be careful with large FAT partitions, I once had an external drive with fat (back in the days when I used windoze, many years ago) and after a while a lot of files got corrupted. IMO FAT is not safe for storing important data.

frisil wrote:I think that was a joke, man! You cannot install Linux on FAT because unix rights are not supported.

By the way, be careful with large FAT partitions, I once had an external drive with fat (back in the days when I used windoze, many years ago) and after a while a lot of files got corrupted. IMO FAT is not safe for storing important data.

Definitely a joke!Regarding FAT partitions,I found it an easy way to have something that Win and Linux can read together. Now with more and more support in linux for NTFS it becomes less necessary than in the past.And don't worry,my REALLY important files are double and even triple backed up on other media!Because of course,you're right when your external disk decides one day it had enough,wether it be Fat partitions or other you're in trouble.But isn't that the fate of every disk? So I make backups of backups on different media and hope for the best.

Have you ever considered using ext3 as data storage for Linux and Windoze? Ext3 is not supported out of box in windoze, but you can get drivers that make it work. Although I have no experience with these drivers, as I don't use windoze anymore (since about 6 years).

BTW, my old external drive was fine, I checked it and reformated and it worked. It was the FAT filesystem that was broken, not the drive. And if you got file corruption, a backup usually won't do you any good, because you back up corrupted files thinking they are all right. You'll only know when you try to access these files and than find out they no longer work.